


The Grey

by MrMammon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Horror, Weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22484620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMammon/pseuds/MrMammon
Summary: A strange weather front settles over town and a college student must navigate his way through the suddenly strange landscape in search of an answer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [This is a first draft of a stream of consciousness short story]

I dunno why this happened, but it did. I don't know how I got out of it. But I did. I'm the lucky one.

About a year ago I was living in an apartment with a very good friend of mine, a guy I'd known since kindergarten. 15 years of friendship. We had a strong bond, and people would often comment about how they were amazed to see us fight like dogs but then act like nothing happened later. It was only natural that we would become roommates after high school. He was going to a local vocational school while I attended one of the universities. He worked as a mechanic and I was a clerk in a bookstore (a natural habitat for an English major).

Anyway, the…event happened in late spring of last year when the area was having all that rain after being relatively dry for the last fourteen months. The rain had been going for four days, and when we woke up on the fifth we found the whole area was enveloped in a thick fog. So thick, in fact, that cell services weren't working and our damn cable was out. Of course, we had Mediacom, so at that time it didn't seem too weird. Luckily we had one of those little electric emergency radios that comes with two flashlights, a little medical kit, and it could be hand-cranked in case of low power.

None of the FM channels were coming in, but we found a low end AM station that had a tired sounding guy droning on about the strange weather. The fog was all over the town, and reports of multiple car accidents were coming in almost constantly. A power station on the north side had been hit by lightning overnight and half the city was now without power and the utility company couldn't give an exact ETA on when it would be restored.

"This is some Silent Hill shit," my friend said with a laugh, but that sent a chill down my spine. My imagination was always a bit more vivid than his. He must have seen something on my face because he punched me in the shoulder and said, "Settle down, fucker." He stood and walked across the room to the mini-fridge next to the couch and pulled out a can of beer–Blue Ribbon, his brand. "Think we could get away with skipping classes this morning until this shit clears up?" The can hissed as he pulled the tab and raised it to his lips to take a long drink.

I shrugged, "Maybe. If it's really as bad as this dude on the radio says it is. I can walk to class, not like I have far to go." I started gathering up my things: my backpack, an umbrella.

My friend belched, "Alright, man. I'll see you later tonight then, I gotta work until nine."

I checked to make sure my phone was charged. It was. I threw my ratty black coat on and brought up the hood. "M'kay," I jingled my keys, "Don't forget to lock the door this time." He rolled his eyes and I stepped out into the fog.

It wasn't really coat weather out, but the thermometer on the deck outside said it was 55 and it was raining so I decided one wouldn't hurt. It was good that I did, because I wasn't expecting the wind, or the severity of the fog. I could barely see ten feet in front of me.

Hugging the railing, I made my way down the three flights of stairs and into the parking lot, which was still full of cars when it was normally at least half empty by now. I saw the old man who lived on the ground floor and was usually outside in the nice weather either mowing the lawn or trimming trees messing with his old truck. He had the hood up and I could hear him rattling around in there, cursing under his breath.

He must have heard me approaching because he looked up as I got close. His face was more ragged than usual and I realized he hadn't shaved. White stubble covered his entire jaw and there was a smudge of oil going up along his right cheek.

"Mornin', neighbor," he said to me, wiping his hands on a particularly dirty rag. "Helluva morning it is, too."

I nodded, shoving my hands into my pockets and lowering my head as a gust of wind blew up. It didn't seem to bother the old man, though. I replied, "Yeah it is. TVs out, cell phones aren't working."

The old man grinned, "Oh no, whatever shall you young folks do?" He slapped the dirty rag down up onto the top of the raised hood of his truck. "Can't get ol' Blue here to start either. And I just tuned her last week. No idea what the hell's wrong with her."

I told him to talk to my friend upstairs if he needed help, and he said he would. Then I plugged my headphones into my phone, turned on my music, and went on my way.

I'd been walking to school using the same route for two years so saying I could be struck blind and still find my way there wouldn't be too big a stretch. But something about this fog just made me feel disoriented, much more so than I ever could have imagined. And there was a particularly foul odor as well, like oil and rotting eggs. I kept my head down, focusing on the sidewalk and my music to try and push away the nausea, and it worked. For a little while.

I dunno exactly how long I walked down that familiar sidewalk, but when I stopped at the place where I was supposed to cross the street I looked up and saw that I wasn't standing where I thought I was. There were no cars rushing on the road in front of me, and no stoplights above me. Panic tugged at the back of my skull, prickling warmth that sent my heart down into my stomach.

"What the hell?" I muttered to myself under my breath, a habit I'd had since I was a small child. My grandma used to say it was okay to talk to yourself, because it was good to talk to someone smart every once in a while.

I looked to my left and right and found only fog. I tried to think about where I was. Had I walked too far? Not far enough? I whirled around, expecting to see tall, black iron posts walling off the property to a retirement home but instead saw a great, rising hill dotted with trees sprawling in every direction. That was definitely not something that was supposed to be there. Not in the middle of the city like this.

A roar like a rushing car startled me and I turned back around to the road just in time to see the red tail lights of a car disappearing into the fog. Droplets of rain landed lightly on my head and I looked up. It was starting again.

I waited, listening for other cars, and when I was satisfied there were none I ran across the road. And almost face first into a red brick building. The sidewalk was much smaller than I was expecting. Of course there were buildings like this all around town, so I wasn't too put off by the sudden appearance. It was when I looked up that I felt unsettled. The red brick stretched high up into the fog…without one single window anywhere to be seen. I looked down the wall to my right and saw no doors. I peeked around the corner to my left and saw the same thing. No doors. No windows.

Another car, this one much bigger, zoomed along the street behind me. I felt the wind from it hit me and send a cool breeze up underneath my coat. I hugged it closer to my body.

Again, I whispered to myself, "Where the hell am I?" as I brought up my umbrella to block out the increasingly frequent rain drops.


	2. Chapter 2

Rain pelted my umbrella heavily as I navigated what I once thought were familiar streets. Strange, windowless buildings made of red or grey bricks continued to sprout at my sides, going up into the fog and disappearing. Cars would only pass by me when I wasn't looking, and I never got more than a flicker of the tail lights blinking out.

I took to calling out for others, desperate for human contact in this dreary landscape. For a while, there was no response, but when it finally came it was in the voice of an unfamiliar woman.

To my surprise, she was leaning out of the barley open door of a convenient store. I felt a jolt of relief as I walked under the awning guarding the gas pumps and slipped into the dull warmness of the store. There were others inside as well, a half dozen other refugees from the strangeness—including a male clerk.

"What the hell is—," I began, but the woman stopped me with a raised hand.

"None of us have any idea what the hell is going on out there, but we're lucky to have found each other at least." She sighed and tossed her short blonde hair back, sending a spray of water in the air behind her. I could see that the very bottoms of her roots were darkly colored—black, or maybe a deep shade of brown. She was dressed in a grey woman's business suit with a skirt that went to just above her knees and she wore a pair of black high heeled shoes.

"Everything was fine this morning when I got in at five," the lanky clerk said in a shaky voice. "But when the fog rolled in…" I could see that his hands were shaking as he pushed them against the black plastic-coated counter top. I understood how he felt.

A heavy-set older man wearing a plaid red and black shirt took of his hat and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He was sweating. "I was drivin' out on Main Street when my truck suddenly died. Ain't never had trouble with the thing before. Not like this. Looked under the hood and couldn't find nothing wrong. It just stopped. Wandered around for an hour or something before ending up here."

Everyone else told similar stories. Cars mysteriously dying. Disorientation. Total loss of cellphone signal. Eerie silence and even more eerie buildings. But we could not figure out how we all found our way to the store.

"When I saw you stumbling out there in the fog I almost screamed," The woman said, folding her arms across her chest. "Wrapped up in your coat like that with the umbrella really made you look…inhuman. But then I saw you look up."

"Well, uh, thanks for bringing me in, I suppose." I said. I'd closed my umbrella and it was now dripping at my side. "What uh…what street is this supposed to be anyway? It isn't on my regular route to school…"

"88th Street," the clerk chimed in, his overly apparent Adam's apple twitching in his throat.

Immediately a map of the area appeared in my brain. "That's…That's almost two miles off my path. But I couldn't have been walking more than half an hour. What the hell?"

"My hospital is almost five miles away. I never come to this side of town!" said the woman in the navy blue nurse scrubs. "How could we all get turned around so badly?"

"I-I can't get any stations on the radio," the clerk stuttered. He looked to be on the verge of a panic attack.

"Do we just…hang out here until the weather clears?" said the dude in glasses and a business suit that clung to his bony frame. "I've got a very important meeting this afternoon. It's my biggest client, I can't afford—"

"We've all got shit we can't miss," said the final occupant of the store, a Latino guy wearing a red hoodie and jeans stained with various types of paint. "But I ain't comfortable going back out in that. Something ain't right, I can feel it in my bones."

"Yeah, that fog has me uneasy too," I said, turning and leaning on the counter as I dragged my gaze towards the doors. The rain had picked up a bit, now coming down hard enough to make a constant, muffled drumming audible from above. There was no wind and no cars had zipped past since I entered.

We all fell into silence then, unsure of how to continue. Briefly, the thought of the rain never stopping and the fog never clearing passed across my mind. What would we do then? I shook my head, clutching my phone in my pocket. Just then something outside exploded. The sound came from far away but the ground still shook from aftershocks and the lights flickered once before shutting off completely. Everyone in the store screamed, the clerk's more like a shriek as he ducked behind the counter.

"Oh fuck!" the plaid shirt man shouted, ducking down on his knees and covering his head with one hand. "This some kinda terrorist attack?!"

"Maybe lightning hit a transformer or—," the nurse began, but a shadow fell over the store, cutting her off.

We collectively held our breath, tension falling over the store like a heavy blanket. The clerk peered up over the counter, his wide eyes focused on what was happening just outside. Something moved in the fog. Something very, very large. A loud sound of twisting metal pierced our ears, causing us all to shout as one and the awning over the gas pumps was suddenly thrown away.

I never found out why he thought to do this, but the clerk reached up and flipped a switch to turn off the pumps just as a thick, black appendage slammed down. The pumps folded under the thing like paper. I slapped my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming.

The black trunk lifted and was soon replaced by another. The ground shook as whatever it was slowly walked past. For the briefest of seconds, I saw thin, shadowy-grey appendages flailing just a few feet above the ground as the Thing passed over us.

Then it was gone.

Slowly we all stood up, not a one of us standing steadily like we had been only moments before. There was an exchange of worried glances and I saw the clerk choking back sobs as tears streaked down his face.


	3. Chapter 3

Had there been more of us in that store, I imagine things would have broken out into utter chaos. The palpable tension had taken on a layer of panic that hadn't felt in many years, not since I had first heard about my grandfather's death ten years ago. We all wanted to break out screaming, tear out of the store and rush back to our homes. But we also knew we couldn't, that that probably wasn't a very good idea.

The clerk was the first to really break. He burst out crying and once again fell out of sight behind the counter. "I knew it!" he cried, it was painful to hear. He was acting out how we all felt.

The grey-suited woman stepped over to the counter and leaned over it to look at the cowering man, "What do you mean?" I could tell she was trying to sound calm, or at least somewhat in control of her fear, but her voice wavered just a bit on her last word. The clerk mumbled something back to her that I couldn't hear and she responded in a whisper.

The others lined the front window and gazed onto the ruined parking lot. I slipped up beside the man in plaid and he looked at me with raised eyebrows and thin pressed lips.

"This ain't got nothing to do with terrorists, does it?" he said in a low voice.

I shook my head, it was the only thing I could think to do.

He stared at me and then extended one hand. "Name's Eddie. Though most folk nowadays call me Granddad." His hands were heavily calloused and his grip was strong. I must have had a funny look on my face because he continued, "Even my own kids. Mostly because I haven't gotten out much since my wife died last year."

"It's, uh, nice to meet you," I replied, telling him my name.

"What do you think that was?" he turned his gaze back out the window.

"I can't even begin to imagine," I said roughly.

"Maybe…we're dead," I'm not sure if he meant to say that out loud, but I didn't respond, and he didn't seem to care.

Eventually the clerk calmed down and we were all able to introduce ourselves to one another. The woman in the grey suit's name was Kristin, the clerk was Brent, the nurse was Alicia, the bony guy in glasses was Hugo, and the Latino guy in the hoodie was Martin. It made me feel a little better to get more familiar with my fellow stranded travelers.

We waited for more to happen, anything to happen, but it didn't. The rain continued and the ruined gas pumps sat like crumpled cans on the blacktop of the parking lot. Water was gathering in the slight indentation the hulking limb had left behind.

I wandered the aisles aimlessly in the dimness, looking over all the snacks without really taking in what I was seeing. The lights had gone out and remained out, so we only had the muted sunlight to keep us company. Once again the rain was the only sound to fill the store, though when I passed Alicia I could see her eyes were red and puffy. She sat on the floor with her knees up to her chest and she didn't look up at me as I went by.

"Take whatever you want," Brent spat as I walked past him, "Don't think my boss will give a shit at this point." I don't know how he managed it, but he looked far more disheveled that he did when I first stumbled in. His hair was wild and the work apron he was wearing was askew on his slight frame.

I nodded to show that I'd heard him but I had no plans to snatch anything from the racks. I wasn't the only one, but as I reached the coolers in the back, I found Martin reaching into the beer section and pulling out a tall can of Budweiser.

He popped the tab and took a long drink, "Tastes like shit," he said afterward, frowning at the can. He looked up as I approached. "Hey, man. Guess it's lucky you found this place, huh?"

I stopped my pacing, "I suppose so. Lucky for all of us." I instinctively shoved my hands in my pockets. "With whatever that…was outside." I motioned with my head.

"Yeah," was all he said as he gazed down into the beer. "You think…maybe we're in Hell?" He tilted the can back and forth and I could hear the faint sound of the liquid sloshing inside.

I found it odd that this was the second time someone was bringing up the theory that we were dead. "I don't…feel like we are. I mean, I saw my roommate this morning, and one of my neighbors. We even found a news station on our little emergency radio before I left the apartment."

"That'd what it'd be like though, right? Seem like everything is normal and then bam. We're burning forever in a lake of fire." Martin squeezed the can. "That thing out there, whatever it was, wasn't anything normal."

"That we can agree on at least," I said. "Enjoy your beer." We nodded at each other and I resumed my patrol.

I saw Hugo standing next to the soda and Slurpee machines, staring at the gleaming silver watch on his wrist, shaking it as if that would do anything. "Goddamn thing," he hissed to himself. He had his black leather briefcase tucked up under his arm. The way he was hugging it made me imagine he would have it attached to his wrist with handcuffs if he could.

"What is it?" I asked, walking up to him.

His head shot up and he glared at me with narrow eyes. "Er…my watch's stopped. Only two years old, and expensive as hell." He held it up to show me and I gave him a sympathetic shake of my head. "I really wish this weird weather would clear up, I need to get to work. The one day I can't afford to be late…," he sighed and pushed his spectacles further up onto his nose.

I looked at him incredulously but he didn't acknowledge it. "Is that what you need to be worrying about right now."

He continued to fiddle with his watch but his eyes narrowed a bit and he shot me a nasty look. He turned away from me as if to say we were done so I shrugged and went on my way. If he wanted to pretend like we hadn't seen what we did, that was fine, but that kind of attitude would be dangerous in the long run.

I stopped, wondering what I meant by that last thought. What attitude? Dangerous how? That's when I noticed my left foot was twitching, the heel bobbing up and down rapidly.

"Are you alright?" Kristin was standing by the doors looking back at me.

"I don't know," I said, swallowing hard and approaching her. "Trying not to think about this whole situation, but it isn't working."

"It isn't something we should ignore," she answered. "Whatever is happening isn't normal, obviously, so we can't just pretend it's nothing. We have to…face this head on."

"Are you…planning on going out there?" I asked, my skin grew cold beneath my heavy jacket.

"Waiting here isn't going to do us much good, especially if help isn't going to come. We're only here because of some morbid turn of 'luck,' we can't depend on that. We have to help ourselves."

"That makes sense," I admired her being able to keep her sense of logic, but also wondered if maybe she was already going a bit stir-crazy.

"I-I'm not going out there!" Brent squeaked, tugging at the collar of his t-shirt.

"Then don't," Kristin shot back. "Y'all can stay in here forever for all I care. But I will not just sit here doing nothing." Maybe she hadn't been planning to leave so soon but thanks to Brent her timetable would have to be moved.

Eddie stepped up next to Kristin, "I'll go with you," he said, pulling his hat further down on his head so it obscured his eyes.

"As will I," Hugo scrambled up next to me, "I can't stay here any longer."

"Count me in too," Martin crumpled up his empty can and let it drop to the floor with a loud clatter. He pulled his hood up.

"Um, and me," I finally added. I didn't want to stay either, but I also had no strong desire to leave.

Brent whined and leaned on the counter, face down. He pulled at his hair with one hand.

Alicia was next, her mascara was running down her face, "You can't leave me here. Please don't leave me here."

Kristin looked at all of us, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open just the slightest bit. "O-Okay," she said softly.

My stomach was in a knot and I felt the bile rise in the back of my throat. What were we doing?


	4. Chapter 4

In the end, Brent decided to join the rest of us. In the end, I don't know if that was a good thing or not. But I wouldn't have wanted to stay behind all alone either.

At Kristin's insistence, we all filled our pockets (and my backpack) with snacks and bottles of water from the store. I found myself impressed with her foresight. She was ready to take control and no one was objecting.

We clustered around the exit to the store like a pack of shivering puppies, completely silent. The rain was coming down steadily and the fog remained as it had since it first appeared. A small pond had formed where the thing had stepped.

"We goin' or what?" Martin suddenly barked, making Alicia jump. I could hear the fear on the edge of his voice.

I clung to my damp umbrella and pushed forward. The little bell dinged as the door came all the way open and we stepped out into the grey. Immediately I got the sense that we were being watched, and a knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Kristin, Eddie and I opened our umbrellas–it was enough for all of us if we stayed clustered together.

"S-So which way do we go?" Brent whimpered, I could practically hear his teeth chattering.

"Well, I came from that way…" I said, pointing to the left.

"Yeah, and it went that way," Martin pointed to the right.

"It's one or the other," Kristin said. "Because there's just those blank buildings across the street." She didn't wait for a discussion and started right. No one protested.

We walked in a line along the sidewalk, with Kristin in the front, me in the middle and Eddie in the back. Endless buildings surrounded us. Grey, brick-red, speckled black and white. I strained my ears listening for cars, or anything. But all we had was the rain and the sound of our own breathing.

My thoughts wandered back to my roommate, and I wondered if he had actually gotten out of the apartment. The Pabst was a good indication that he had already decided to bunk down for the day, but no doubt he would get bored eventually, especially if the power went out.

While I was thinking about Paul, I nearly walked right into the back of Alicia. Kristin had stopped us, holding up one hand. "Look…over there…" her voice was soft, barely audible.

A collective gasp rose up from our collective as the fog seemed to open up in front of us. Revealed in a vast landscape of rubble and dust were dozens of collapsed buildings intermixed with crushed cars and shattered power lines. Wispy columns of black smoke coiled up from the ruins and the occasional crack sounded, soon followed by little blue arcs of electricity.

"This must be what we heard earlier," Eddie said in a gruff voice, his hat once again obscuring his eyes. "It looks like this place got hit by a nuke." He started towards the rubble.

"Be careful!" Alicia called out, tugging at Eddie's shirt urgently, following him like a child.

"Watch for those live wire…" I said, then to myself, "Wait, why are they still…"

"Fucking weird," Martin appeared at my side, hood up. "Not just the electricity thing but…I don't recognize any of these buildings. I grew up here, ain't no street I don't know. But I don't know this one."

That's when I noticed there were no signs mixed in with the ruined buildings, no signs of license plates on any of the cars. I stepped out of the line and hurried after Eddie with Martin and Hugo on my tail to try and stay under my umbrella.

I reached him as we got to the foot of the first chunk of debris. "You aren't thinking of trying to climb through all this, are you?" I asked him and he turned around.

"Don't see we have much of a choice," the older man said matter-of-factly. Then he added, "I'm old, but I'm not dead. I'll be fine."

"That's not…will any of us be fine climbing up and around this shit?" Martin threw in. He stepped up and kicked a large chunk of concrete. "Christ…" He looked up, covering his face with his hand to block some of the rain.

Hugo's fogged-up glasses were dangling perilously on the end of his nose. "Oh God, what are we going to do? Should we go back?"

Kristin and the others finally approached, "No, we aren't going back," she said, "We'll have to find a way around all this. Or…through it." She bent down and pointed.

So the rest of us did the same. There were spaces all throughout the wreckage, even some places that let rain and light in. The idea didn't appeal to me, but I kept my mouth shut because I didn't have anything better.

Again we had to move single file and again Kristin went first. The makeshift tunnel wasn't too bad, gave us plenty of room to spare as we moved on our hands and knees. My backpack barely brushed the ceiling.

"At least the rain ain't hitting us in here," Martin called up from behind me.

We encountered two crushed cars and had to squeeze past them. I looked into the first one through the half open door and saw that there wasn't anything in it. No seats, no steering wheel. Nothing. I felt a tingling in the back of my skull and shivered. I left the empty car behind and then a few moments later heard someone else messing with it. I turned my head to see Hugo looking nervously into the empty car, his eyes impossibly wide beneath his glasses.

"C'mon," I said to him and he jumped, almost hitting his head on the ceiling. He nodded silently. He was still dragging the briefcase along with one hand and I wondered what could possibly be inside it.

The tunnel went on and on and on, never growing any wider or narrower. Only the holes in the ceiling changed, letting in varying sizes of shafts of grey light and rain. Normally I associated the smell of wet concrete with comfort, having grown up in the suburbs, but now it was tinged with something foul, something indescribably unsettling.

My palms and knees were numb when Kristin called out from the front of our little line, "The path opens up ahead, no more crawling!"

For how long? I thought.

But the change in scenery and the chance to get off my hands and knees was welcome. We found ourselves in a sort of cavern, made by two buildings that had collapsed against each other over the street. There were several ruined cars in the area (all of them empty like the other) as well as ink black sewer pipes sprouting from the ground, each of those leaking a fetid sickly grey water.

I climbed up onto the hood of one of the cars and leaned back against the windshield, staring up at the fallen buildings above. Outside, the wind howled, some of the cracks in the shoddy ceiling letting in cold drafts.

Everyone huddled around the car I'd perched myself on, not talking, but shivering and standing in a cluster for warmth. I sat up slowly, looking them over. "Hey…where's Hugo?"

"He's right…" Kristin began, "He was behind you, right?"

I nodded, sliding off the hood. "Hugo?" I called out. It wasn't as if there were a lot of places to hide in this area.

Eddie hobbled over to the tunnel we came out of and hunched down to call into it. "Hugo! You in there?"

We rushed around the area, looking in the cars and around and beneath pieces of rubble. Nothing. Alicia called out in a panicked voice, "Maybe he…went through here!" We ran to gather around her and the wide black pipe that lead back into the rubble, the foul water making me gag and turn my head.

"No way that dude went off by himself," Martin said, squatting next to the pipe and covering his mouth with the collar of his hoodie. "Looked like he'd be blown away by a strong wind."

"He musta gone up ahead," Eddie said, approaching the rest of us. "He got out before me when we came in."

We stood around the black pipe with the trickling water, staring into it. I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight function, kneeling down in front of the pipe. "Hugo!" I called into the blackness, shining the light into it. "Hugo! Come on, man!" My light did little to help.

"It's the only way out," Kristin said and I looked back over my shoulder to see her hunching down next to me. Her hair was stuck wetly to her head. "If we're all rested up, we should get going as well. We might run into Hugo." Her eyes settled on me, "You've got the light…mind going first?"

I shrugged, "Okay," I really didn't want to, but what other choice did I have? I heard Brent and Alicia moan in tandem behind me.

The foul water was ice cold and soaked right through my pants. "Erk…" The bile rose in my throat as I splashed forward.


	5. Chapter 5

We crawled through the wet, foul tunnel for God knows how long. At some point I felt like I had forgotten what it was like to be dry at all. I could hear the others murmuring to each other behind me, but all their words were unintelligible.

Eventually the grey light of the clearing faded. Another light came on behind me and Eddie called out that it was him. He'd had a small flashlight in his pocket. He offered to pass it up to me, but I declined. My light was doing well enough on its own.

My knees hurt. My palms ached and were freezing. The level of the water never changed and unfortunately the horrific smell was growing stronger. I heard someone behind me retching.

Another strange thing was happening: the inside of the tunnel was growing warm and I thought I could hear a distant, low and rhythmic thumping. Like someone banging on the pipe. I called back and asked if anyone else could hear it, but no one could. I felt like I was losing my mind. The further we went, the louder it became, until at one point I couldn't tell the beating of the tunnel from the sound of my own heart. I felt something dripping from the ceiling onto my back, something warm and thick. Suddenly I was glad to not be able to see the inside of the pipe in all its glory.

My heart was beating loudly in my ears now, and my lungs were having a hard time getting enough air. I'd never experienced claustrophobia before. Soon I was panting, gasping. I wanted to turn around and go back. I wanted to run through the fog and get back to my apartment. To crawl back in bed and forget the day ever happened.

I felt a hand rest on my ankle and I screamed. Brent screamed in return and I heard his head slam into the pipe above.

"Are you alright?" It was Kristin.

I swallowed hard, "I…I don't think so. This…enclosed space is starting to get to me."

"It can't go on forever," Kristin said softly, and I felt her patting my shoe. "Don't stop now."

So I continued. Not spurred on by Kristin's halfhearted words of encouragement, but from my own desire to get the hell out of the dark and back on my feet. In the open. No matter what waited.

I got my wish soon enough. A grey shaft of light appeared above us as the pipe split upward. It was still raining. The pipe still went forward but I was hellbent on getting out. So I stood up without thinking.

A cold blast of wind hit me in the face as I stood up. It was refreshing. Until I opened my eyes. At some point the pipe had apparently gone back to its underground path, I found myself standing at street level with my head peeking out of a sewer hole.

And in front of me was one of the tallest god damn buildings I had ever seen in my life. None of it was covered by the fog that had settled all around it like some sort of barrier.

A set of glass double doors acted as the entrance, and was surrounded on either side by three black windows. These windows extended upwards at least fifty floors before becoming obstructed by the fog. I can't explain the surreal horror that settled within me then. Something about the building was wrong for me. It wasn't a weird shape or color—just brown brick and glass—just wrong. There was no sign to indicate what the building was for, though it looked like it could be an office building. The windows beyond the first floor were unlit as well, black eyes on an endless brick face. For a moment it looked to me as if the building was swaying ever-so-slightly back and forth. Like how you can see clouds moving if you stare up at the sky long enough. Nausea washed over me. I had to close my eyes and shake my head while steadying myself to get it to stop.

I felt Kristin tugging on pant leg, "What is it? Is everything okay? Is it safe up there?" I wanted to say no, but kept silent.

"C'mon man. We all wanna get the hell outta here." I heard Martin call.

I pulled myself out of the hole, scraping my knees on the asphalt road as I did so, trying not to look at the building. Next came Kristin, then Eddie, Martin, Alicia and Brent. Each of them stared uncomfortably at the building as they emerged before moving on.

"What the hell is this?" Martin hissed. His hood was up again, drooping down over his eyes. His hoodie was soaked from the sewer water. "I don't recognize this part of town either."

Compared to the big building, all the others seemed grey and dull. Lifeless. Not that it was better, just more…alive. Eddie, who had brought his umbrella back up, moved past me quickly, almost running into me. I watched as he approached the big building, stopping halfway between it and the group.

"Hey. Look. It's Hugo!" Eddie pointed and through the double doors was the faint figure of the businessman. Or so it seemed. Behind the glass his thin frame looked unstable, rippled.

We rushed forward together, up the front stairs, all the while calling Hugo's name. The very second we pushed through the doors he was gone. While we left trails of water behind, there was no indication he had even been there. Or that anyone from outside had.

"Are you sure you saw the dude?" Martin asked, watching as Eddie closed his umbrella.

"Sure I'm sure. Really sure."

We were standing in a vast, empty lobby of some kind. There were dark green plants in stark white ceramic pots sitting at evenly spaced intervals all along the wall starting at the doors and going all around to the back wall, which was lined with elevators. I couldn't tell if they were real or fake, even up close. Something kept me from reaching out and touching them. A single wooden desk in the shape of a U sat in the middle, near the back wall. The desk was bare.

"Feels like I'm standing in some weird modern art painting," Alicia whispered.

"It's too damn quiet," Kristin said, speaking quietly as well.

At some point Brent had wandered over to one of the elevators. I looked over just in time to see him pressing the call button.

"What are you doing?!" I called out.

Brent jumped and yanked his hand back like a child caught touching something they shouldn't, "U-Uh, I dunno, I just…"

The elevator dinged, startling us all, and the doors slowly slid open with a whoosh. The inside was lit by a pair of round lights on the ceiling and a thick railing ran all around the interior.

Brent looked between us and it and began leaning over to peek inside. I tried to call out for him to stop but the very second he stepped in the doors slammed shut behind him. Not slowly. Hard enough to make my ears ring.

"Oh shit," Martin breathed, he was half crouched like he was ready to run. I don't blame him. My own instincts were screaming for me to do the same.

The lights at the top of the elevator Brent had walked into lit up all at once and began to flash randomly, never lingering on one floor number for longer than two seconds. The rest of us stood gathered around looking up at the flashing in terror. From the corner of my eye I saw Alicia clinging to Kristin, her mouth hanging open.

"Should…should we push the button now?" I asked no one in particular.

"Are you fucking crazy?" Martin slapped me on the shoulder.

"…don't see why not," and suddenly Eddie's calloused hand shot out and slapped the call button again.

Thirty seconds passed. Probably the longest thirty seconds of my life. None of us spoke, or moved. I had to remind myself to breathe.

Bing

One of the doors to our left opened. None of us moved towards it. It didn't close. The light shone out of the open door onto the glossy floor, reflecting the interior with crystal clarity.

I could see that no one wanted to be the first to go. So I did.


	6. Chapter 6

I stood in front of the open elevator feeling as if I were facing some kind of big juncture in my life. When you think of your final moment, you hope it isn't something mundane like stepping into an elevator. Even if that elevator reminds you of an open, waiting mouth.

I heard the others whispering furiously to one another behind me but I didn't look back. If I did, I might start to question what I was doing. There wasn't any logic to my action, I knew. There was just a feeling of rightness to it all.

"Don't! Stop!" I heard Kristin' shout as I stepped over the threshold.

I looked down and could see there was a slim gap between the elevator and the lobby floor. A pitch black slit. It was maybe thick enough to drop a cellphone through but that was it. Yet that little bit of darkness sent a wave of unease down into my stomach. I felt dizzy.

The doors slammed shut behind me as soon as both of my feet were over the threshold, and I managed to turn my head just enough to see Kristin sprinting towards me with her arm outstretched. Again the sound of the doors closing rung heavily in my ears, making me wince.

The elevator shifted and I swayed to the side, grasping the cold, metal railing for support. I could feel myself being pulled upwards. That's when I noticed there were no buttons. No indication to the amount of floors. No meter or display showing how fast I was being pulled up.

I'm not claustrophobic even in the loosest sense of the word, but I suddenly felt very trapped, as I had inside the pipe. It was becoming harder to breath and I felt a heavy weight bear down on my shoulders. I gasped for air, tugging at the collar of my t-shirt with one hand and wiping my forehead with the other. I stood in the middle of the elevator, afraid to touch anything.

The lights above me began to flicker and I looked up to see them in the process of physically changing. They had been, to the best of my knowledge, round indentations in the ceiling with light bulbs in the center, but now they were elongating. Becoming more like fluorescent tubes, the light in them changing from yellow to white.

The heat in the small lift was growing warmer and more humid by the second. A stark difference from what was going on outside. It was stifling. Growing up I had to deal with pretty severe asthma, it finally started getting better (before completely going away) when I turned seventeen. The sweltering air reminded me of the summers of my childhood where the heat and the allergens would trigger asthma attacks. On a particular summer day after I had gotten done mowing the lawn I almost collapsed. My lungs felt like they had shrunk ten times their normal size, like a barrier had appeared in my throat and only the tiniest bits of air could slip through.

This is what was happening to me now. I gasped like a fish out of water, falling to my knees and grasping at my throat. Tiny translucent dots swam at the edges of my vision, blurring. I closed my eyes to try and block out the increasingly bright light. I might as well have been staring at the sun.

The ground beneath my knees grew soft and soggy, undulating, and again I could hear a heartbeat that wasn't my own somewhere at the edges of my hearing. And the smell. The stench. Rotting eggs, burnt popcorn. Sour bile rose in my throat, I tried to push it back down but to no avail. The vile liquid spewed from between my lips before I could put my hands over my mouth, burning my tongue and palate.

This caused me to heave forward and my hands hit the strangely soft floor and sunk in. I finally opened my eyes to find myself kneeling in some kind of fleshy substance, red and yellow. It pulsated against my palms. I sat up immediately and looked around. Everything in the elevator had changed. Had become the strange flesh like the floor. The railings had become bright pink and covered in barely visible ridges. Bright white spikes lined the upper and lower edges of the walls and filled what had once been the spaces between the long tiles that previously made up the wall.

Teeth was the first thought that came to my mind. Those are teeth.

The entire elevator began to tremble. I looked up. I wish I hadn't. The elongated tubes were now eyes. Staring down at me with long, vertical, black pupils. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a weak gargling-wheezing noise.

The elevator suddenly jerked and I almost fell over. I climbed to my feet as I watched the flesh in front of me slowly part with an organic ripping sound. Blood poured flowed down the middle and I could see the eyes above me rolling around furiously.

Before I could get a good look at what awaited me outside, something hard and thick pushed me forward. I stumbled out into the open and the doors once more slammed shut behind me.

I lifted my head. I was in an open room similar to the lobby, with a single vast window acting as the back wall, and instead of a desk there was what I can only describe as an altar. Made of wood and bone, constructed all the way up to the ceiling–a good fifteen feet. In the center of the altar was a single wooden post, and dangling from that post by a thick piece of worn rope was a massive, bleached white animal skull in the shape of what must have been an enormous deer.

There was one more thing. One more glaring, horrific thing. Dangling from the skull was Brent. Nude. Stripped completely of his flesh from the neck down, with only the skin of his hands and feet remaining. His face was contorted in agony, his eyes wide, his mouth agape. Fresh blood still dripped from the bright crimson corpse of the convenient store cashier onto the glossy tiled floor.


	7. Chapter 7

What I was looking at didn't register for several seconds. I sat in silence on the cold tiled floor, staring up at the skinned, eviscerated corpse that had once been Brent. He had been split from throat to crotch and most of his intestines were hanging out, every ounce of blood drained from him.

Then I let out a primal scream that I couldn't believe came from my own mouth. It echoed off the smooth walls, and if I didn't know better I would swear it made the glass windows shake. I couldn't stop it, not until my lungs were absolutely empty of air. I gasped and clutched at my throat, coughing out almost all of what I was able to get in. My throat burned terribly. I placed my forehead down on the cool tiles, trying not to look up at Brent's remains.

Again I felt as if my asthma was coming back. My lungs felt smaller and filled with cotton. My heart was beating fast and loud in my ears, scattering any coherent thoughts that tried to form in my brain. I wanted to both run and curl up into a ball and fade away to nothing. What was this hell I suddenly found myself in?

A soft tap-tap-tap in the shadows to my left caused me to sit up straight with a jerk. Standing at the edge of the shadow, just barely in the grey light from the windows, was an enormous thing draped in a crimson red cloak. It was easily ten feet tall, and where the head should be, poking out of the cloak, was a deformed, too-large elk skull. Its empty black sockets stared right into me. But I had no more energy left to scream.

The Thing seemed to glide across the floor thanks to its flowing cloak. It drifted around me in a wide circle, observing me, tilting its head back and forth like a dog. From somewhere within it came a soft, rapid clicking. I had to turn my gaze away, looking at it made me want to vomit despite my empty stomach.

More tapping. More clicking. Shadows surrounded me as the grey light was obstructed by more monolithic figures. A sea of crimson cloth.

This one? came an inhuman voice in my mind.

This one, said a second.

Show us your will.

I looked up and saw that I was now surrounded by elk-headed things. Leaned over, looking at me. Their horns interlaced, locked with one another at impossible angles. There was a violent flapping sound, like a flag in stormy winds, and all the cloaks opened at once.

And I saw stars. Infinite stars in pitch blackness. Then I was falling. The tiled floor beneath me melted away and I was falling through that black space. I don't know how long I fell, or how far–it was hard to tell because nothing changed—but all at once I suddenly impacted onto a hard, porous surface. My head slammed down and finally, blessedly, my consciousness slipped away.

I awoke to a near intolerable heat, a thin layer of sweat clinging to my flesh. My hair matted onto my head. It was the complete opposite from the place I had just come from. As my vision cleared, and I wiped the stinging, sour sweat from my eyes, I got a good look at my surroundings.

I was standing…in a enormous room, surrounded by rusty gears and chains and wheels. Distant orange lights illuminated the area just enough for me to be able to see without tripping over my own feet. Off in the distance came the grinding of gears and the hissing of steam. Unrecognizable machines hung from the ceiling and sprouted from the metal-mesh floor. Pipes connected some, exposed wire others. Some of those pipes were opaque, allowing me to see a thick white liquid being pumped through.

I frantically looked back over my shoulder and saw that, against all odds, my backpack was still there. I quickly unslung it and tore it open and dug around for a flashlight. I found my emergency shake-light. My heart sank, but it would have to do.

I shook it. The rattling gave little comfort. I pressed the button on the bottom and a bright, luminescent white light cut through the dimness. Its charge was shit, but at least it threw a decent beam.

There was no single path for me to follow. Just narrow paths between unearthly machines for me to follow. No signs. No signals. The orange light was making me nauseous, and for some reason also heartburn. I couldn't stop it, I belched. It brought a little relief, but also something else.

From high up on the unseen ceiling came a loud CLANG, followed by squealing gears and shifting metal grinding on metal. I nearly fell on my ass as I turned my light upwards.

Swinging above me was a giant robotic face. Massive jaw opening and closing rhythmically as little orange-white sparks flickered in its enormous eye holes. Its head shook with each full closing of its jaw. There was blood on its jagged mandible.

"RUN!" It screeched in an ear piercing, hollow voice.

So I did.


	8. Chapter 8

No matter how much I ran, the robotic head seemed to be hovering right over me, watching me with those massive, empty sockets as its mouth mechanically opened and shut with the sound of a thousand rusty gears. The passages between the strange machines were almost too narrow for me to fit through, and the few and far between open spaces left me feeling vulnerable to getting snatched up. It was while I was worrying about these two things that I didn't notice the stifling fog slowly creeping over me.

I managed to find a passage just wide enough that I could stop skipping sideways and actually run. But the fog kept me from seeing the orange metal bar sticking up from the ground just high enough to hit me below the knees and send me flying forward, splayed on my face. Sharp jolts of pain ran up and down my entire body as I slammed down onto the cold, hard metal. Thankfully, I did not skid at all, or I might have lost a bunch of skin.

Face throbbing, I sat up on my knees and tried to rub my eyes clear of the stars and sparks that had sprung up within them. Slowly, a massive shadow fell over me and I couldn't help myself. I looked up. The robotic face was hovering over me now, looking straight down upon me. Its mouth hung open and inside that gaping maw I could see a thousand tiny points of multicolored light. I forgot the pain immediately. Every muscle in my body tensed up.

From within those lights came snaking down a thousand serrated wires glowing with electric blue energy. Curling right towards me. It was over now, I knew. I tightened myself up into a little ball and clenched my eyes shut, ready for pain. But it didn't come. The cold wires wrapped around my body, encasing me like a cocoon, but that's all they brought: darkness.

And then suddenly I was standing on my feet underneath a pillar of pale white light. Surrounded by silence. I looked down and saw I was standing on concrete, cold hard stone. The emptiness around me was completely still, and very heavy.

I couldn't help myself. "H-Hello?" I called out, answered only by my echoed voice a half dozen times.

I was about to muster up the courage to step forward when a loud grating sound from high above caused me to freeze. It went on for a solid ten seconds and then a loud CLICK, and there was a second shaft of light ten feet in front of me.

Then the bloody rain began. Sickening thump after sickening thump announced the arrival of a bloody body part. Dismembered and stripped of flesh. Spraying small clouds of blood with each wet thud. I had nothing left inside of me to vomit up, but I tried anyway. Dry heaving so hard the stars in my vision returned, my stomach feeling like it was being hit with a sledgehammer.

Arms. Legs. Hands. Feet. Torsos. Then, finally, heads. Two of them.

thuck thuck

The two heads bounced down the mountain of limbs and rolled across the floor. Right in my direction.

It was all too perfect to be a coincidence. The heads stopped just four feet away from me, faces contorted in immeasurable pain pointed in my direction. Martin. Alicia. Their mouths hung open, tongues ripped out, most teeth missing. The beheading hadn't been clean, I could see that much from the raggedness of the loose skin of their necks.

"FAILURE!" screeched a deep, hollow voice from somewhere in the darkness.

The light over the dismembered corpses shut off with a THUNK. And seconds later the one over my head did the same, sending me into a black, silent abyss. The ground vanished beneath my feet and a hard, cold wind blew up beneath me. I was falling.

Too weak to scream, I could only flail as I twisted in the air. Dizziness and disorientation in the pitch black swept me into merciful unconsciousness.


	9. Chapter 9

I awoke some time later, lying on a cold marble floor that reflected the dim yellow-white lights that hovered above me somewhere in the infinite ceiling. I sat up and rubbed my temples. My brain felt like it was on fire and there was a painful throbbing behind my eyes. I blinked once and a vision of Martin and Alicia's heads hit me fast and hard. I realized then I was also shaking uncontrollably.

No matter what I tried, my muscles wouldn't listen. So I sat there on the hard floor, shivering with fear. It was a loud bang behind me that finally got me to stop. I whirled around without standing up, instinctively crawling backwards on my ass.

A thin red light, just a tiny dot, appeared in the darkness and slowly began to rise into a long, pulsating line. It beat in time with my heart. With each thump the light flared briefly. Breathing was slowly becoming more and more difficult the wider the line got; the sound of metal grating against stone told me that this was an opening door. The lizard brain in me was crying out to flee. I agreed with it.

The floor was slick as if it had been recently polished, I could barely get on my feet. By the time I was able to stand up straight and still, the light was already wide enough for someone to step through. Turning tail, I took a half dozen steps into a hard run and then slammed face first into an obsidian column carved with ghoulish, inhuman face.

Warmth spilled out of my nose and down over my lips and chin. Blood. I was panting loudly now; a cornered animal whose options had suddenly run out. The red light spread all around me, revealing more columns like the one I had run into. The faces began to writhe and twist in the stone, mouths moving in silent torture.

Crimson light flooded the room, blinding me, sending me stumbling and covering my eyes. The soft moans of the faces in the pillars rose like a demonic choir all around me. The cacophony grated on my ears. Knees buckled, sending me back to the floor.

A figure appeared in the light ahead of me. Burly and wide. Holding something in its right hand. Something long and thin.

"Had to do it…," came a soft, but familiar voice. "Didn't have a choice. Had to do it. I wanna go home. I just wanna go home." The figure took a few staggering steps forward before stopping again, swaying on their feet.

My eyes widened as the figure came into focus. White light balanced with red to reveal the person standing before me. Eddie. Carrying a clump of blonde hair still attached to some scalp in his left hand and a long, jagged knife in his right. The blade of the knife was covered in strange, wholly unfamiliar glyphs. They glowed with an unearthly light, and looking at them directly made my stomach twist.

"I gotta get home." Eddie said, his words slurring. His eyes were half open and glazed over with some kind of grey film. Blood dripped from the scalp clenched in his fist. "They…they said they'd send me home if I…"

Despite my troubles earlier, I now leapt to my feet with ease, backing away from Eddie. Step for step. His flannel shirt was shredded and stained with blood. Kristin's blood. I wondered…did he kill Alicia and Martin too?

Eddie slowly raised the knife, the tip wavering back and forth. "I don't want to do this, kid," He said, staring at me. He raised his head slightly, the light reflecting on his glasses in such a way to obscure his eyes.

Part of me wanted to just give up right then and there. To fall to my knees and let Eddie do whatever it was he wanted to do. After all, I'd just been running away this entire ordeal. Wasn't it time to rest?

Eddie took a step forward, bringing the glowing knife around towards my abdomen in a vicious side swipe. And I found myself leaping backwards out of the way. As I should have expected, as my feet hit the ground after the leap they couldn't find purchase on the slick marble and I went flying backwards, arms flailing and screaming.

I slammed into one of the horrific pillars, a twisting mouth ending up right next to my ear. Deep within it I could hear the faint cries of someone in terrible, terrible pain. I looked up just in time to see Eddie rushing towards me with the knife raised above his head, ready to come down on me.

I bent my knees slightly just as Eddie started his downswing and the knife sunk into the pillar with a soft squish just centimeters away from my shoulder. Without thinking, I balled up my fist and slammed it into Eddie's stomach.

His abdomen was harder than I thought it would be and pain shot through entire right hand. Eddie let out a hurt gasp, the knife slipping from his hand as he stumbled back. As he staggered, the ice-like floor struck yet again. The old man went head over heels onto his back…and there was a sickening crunch as his neck hit the ground at a bad angle.

I watched Eddie's static form slide slightly back on the floor. My heart was a drum in my ears and my chest, and I just couldn't seem to get enough air into my lungs–my loud panting the only thing now piercing the silence. That, and the pulsating light of the knife's runes.

Slowly, and steadily, I pushed myself away from the pillar, which was now still, and turned to look at the knife. In the dimming red light from where Eddie had emerged, I could see that the blade of the knife was coated in a dried, red substance.

Blood.

I reached out with a trembling hand and took hold of the hilt. It was cold, and carved from wood. It came loose from the fleshy-obelisk easily. There was almost no weight to it as I tested it in my hand.

_This thing killed Kristin._ I thought as my eyes wandered to Eddie. I felt no anger towards him. Only pity. We had all just wanted out of this strange world.

I looked up towards the red light, and headed towards it. I saw no other choice.


	10. Chapter 10

I could see nothing beyond the red light. Hear nothing. I kept walking, gripping the knife tightly in my hand, thinking about the others I had come to this place with. We hadn't gotten to know each other very well, but there was still some connection…we were all just normal people trapped in a strange and horrible place for no reason other than to die. Or to kill.

A warmness enveloped me as I stepped over the invisible threshold to immerse myself fully in the light. I closed my eyes.

I made my way forward for several minutes, the scenery around me never changing. Eventually, though, I found myself walking slower and slower despite not recalling doing so on purpose. Steps became harder and harder with each one that came. It felt like I was trying to push my way through water. The atmosphere pressed against me as I trudged forward. All I could see was red. I closed my eyes when it started to hurt to look at.

The red came through my clenched eyelids as a shade of pink. The pain reduced to a minor throbbing in my temples. Anxiety churned in the pit of my stomach, making it feel heavy. I trudged on, feeling that there was no turning back now. I would meet whatever it was in front of me head on.

I have no idea how long I walked. A change in the very atmosphere hit me instantaneously, leaving me confused and frightened. When the pink hues turned black I stopped immediately. On the edges of my hearing came the sound of a thousand whispering voices. But unlike the ones coming from the living pillars, these took on a tone of curiosity and amusement. Despite this, however, my fear and anxiety only increased. The knife felt heavy in my white-knuckled fist.

For more than a minute, I feared opening my eyes. The whispering grew to a fever pitch, seeming close and far away at the same time. Every fiber of my being was saturated with dread.

"SURVIVOR." came an ear piercing howl that jolted my eyes open involuntarily. Standing before me…and all around me…where more of the cloaked figures with deer skulls for heads. I could see the universe just beneath each of their cloaks as they stared at me with glowing red eyes.

The one in the center moved first. Hobbling towards me with a _click click click_ beneath its sweeping cloak. I brought the knife up without thinking and I saw it was trembling, that my hands were trembling. This didn't stop the creature, instead it kept coming at me until the knife was just barely poking it beneath the cloak, near the throat. It was then that I saw the visage beneath. Familiar blue eyes. Smeared red lipstick and pale, sickly flesh.

Back went the twisted deer skull to reveal Kristin standing before me. The entire left side of her scalp was gone, exposing red and white skull below. The flesh around her left eye had been stripped away as well, making it look like nothing but a fleshy orb resting in a dark socket. Both of her eyes were bloodshot and she was grinning at me with a twisted smile. Some of her teeth were missing.

The tip of the knife dipped down as I almost lost my grip on it. A cold wave of despair washed over me, sending icy chills from the top of my skull to the bottoms of my feet.

"You did it," Kristin whispered, her voice sounding weak and raspy. "Eddie…Oh, Eddie…showed such potential, but in the end here _you_ are. Why is that? All you've done is run, run, run…" she made a sound that I think was supposed to be laughter but it only reminded me of grating metal. "It doesn't matter, though. Our ritual is—"

She didn't get to finish. I can't tell you what came over me exactly…it was some kind of primordial rage. I wanted to hear her out, to hear the explanation for all this, and why she had been lying to the rest of us. But that isn't what happened. The anger in me took over and I thrust the glowing knife up under Kristin's chin. The feeling of it sinking into her soft flesh and up into her brain brought me a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

Kristin's eyes went wide and she made a strained, wet choking noise. Her hands–her fingers now far too long—shot up and wrapped around my wrists, but her strength was already flowing out with her blood in horrible spurts, coating both our arms with boiling hot stickiness. I pushed the knife up harder and felt Kristin's feet leave the ground. Her bloody eyes rolled up into her head and her arms went limp, her mouth slack. The universe beneath her cloak winked out in a blink.

"IT IS COMPLETE!" screamed a disembodied voice, causing me to drop the knife. It landed at my feet in the pool of blood growing out of Kristin's corpse.

All at once, the remaining…things threw their cloaks open wide and the universes merged into one great abyss. The abyss continued to expand, shooting beneath my feet and over my head into a great dome. I crouched down, bloody hands over my head. All I could do was shriek.


	11. Chapter 11

Again I found myself free floating in a space full of stars, tumbling slowly head over feet. I could do nothing to stop the momentum that had seized me. At least I could breathe. The complete silence was eerie, like a blanket being forcibly held around my body. Oppressive. I felt pressure pressing against my eardrums, and the tips of my fingers were ice cold, almost numb.

I floated for what seemed like an eternity amongst the strangely colored lights. Occasionally, I caught a glimpse of a nearby planet. Some looked like Earth, some were just water, or for some reason burning bright red. Asteroids passed me by, their porous bodies making me nervous–more than once I thought I felt something looking out at me from within. Gaseous nebulae drifted far in the distance, shining with bright pastel colors. To see such things with my own eyes…I must admit it was beautiful. I figured if I was going to die here, this was a good last sight.

All of these things winked in and out of my vision rapidly, long before I could do much studying. I was an outsider in this place. This place…in-between. I tried to occupy my mind with what I was seeing, but its fleeting nature kept me from concentrating. All I could really think about was what happened in that foggy place. All those people who just came and went out of my life as fast as any other, but were somehow close to me because of circumstances. Maybe I had even passed one or two of them on the street randomly before. I don't know.

They're dead now. I am not, at least not yet. It's scary, knowing your death is approaching, and yet also–at least in this kind of scenario—peaceful. The numbness slowly crept up my fingers through my hands up my arms to my elbows, and finally my shoulders. I couldn't move at all. So I closed my eyes.

All at once I felt myself being jerked around violently. Left and right, up and down. Whipped by an unfelt storm. My glasses slipped from my face and, with my eyes still clenched shut, I began to flail the best I could to try to grab them again. But they were gone. I tried to open my eyes then and felt the immediate sting of water blur my vision. Then I slammed into something hard and cold.

I found myself suddenly soaked completely through to the bone, every muscle in my body screaming in agony. I pushed myself up on my hands, feeling the cold, wet concrete on my palms. Finally my eyes opened and I saw I was back out in the street. I looked up to my left and saw the tall steel traffic light, the green "walk" sign blinking rapidly. My glasses lay beneath me, the left lens cracked and completely useless. I put them back on anyway, perching them on the end of my nose as I struggled to my feet.

I fell back onto the raised brick wall for support, desperately looking around for…anything. I was relieved, in a sense, to be back in familiar space, but I felt something was still wrong. To my right, back towards my apartment, I saw a flickering orange light through the grey wall of rain.

I stumbled towards it, my brain in a dense a fog as the kind that surrounded me. That orange flickering light…was a bus…on fire. Smashed together were a dozen vehicles, all on fire to some degree. Thankfully I could not see any bodies within any of them, but I knew they were there. Blood pooled and flowed all around the wreckage, mixing with the fallen rain and drifting down sewer grates at the curb designed to help with flooding.

That's when I heard the first scream. The ear-shattering screech of a woman suffering pure, abject terror. It came from across the street, over the burning wreckage. More voices soon joined, a cacophonous choir of fear. Things moved in the fog just out of my sight, grey and black blurs jerking in ways that sent chills down my spine. So I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing I'm really good at.

I ran.

The apartments emerged from the fog, a brick and mortar monolith. The parking lot was still full of cars that had never left, never taken their drivers to work or school. The large truck the old man had been working on was still there, its hood still open. Tools lay on the side walk scattered about haphazardly…and bloody streaks led further down the walkway into one of the first floor doors.

I tore up the stairs to my apartment, plunging my hands into my pockets for my keys. They were gone. I had lost them somehow. I checked the door anyway and found it unlocked. A wave of relief washed over me as I burst into the living room.

The apartment was empty. There was a dark stain on the old couch where my roommate had been sitting, and an open plastic cooler sitting next to where his feet would have been. It was full of lukewarm, unopened cans of beer. And the TV was still on, though it showed only hissing static.

I shut the door and locked all three of the locks, I then put a chair angled up against the doorknob, hoping and praying that would be enough. Distant explosions and sirens told me things were still happening outside.

Exhausted, I threw myself onto the couch, careful not to touch the outline of my best friend. I don't know what to do now.


End file.
